


Snake Oil

by gxlden



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 19th Century, Drabble, Gen, I am not a doctor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Medical History, Medical Procedures, Mild Blood, Minor Injuries, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2020-07-10 19:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19911175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gxlden/pseuds/gxlden
Summary: Crowley's latest grift involves selling patent medicines all across England and other parts of Europe, roving around with his own traveling medicine show and bag of fake cures. One month, he finds himself back in London, and one night in an operating theater, with ample seating and high ceilings and an unusually high success rate. "Medical miracles," they say, but Crowley knows better.





	1. Chapter 1

The black carpet bag in his hand is weighed down with poultices, tinctures, capsules and cash. He can hear the green glass bottles of Dr. Crow’s Miracle Medicament clinking together as he pulls open the door to the London operating theater, figuring it’s as good a place as any to peddle his wares outside the medicine show. Though as of late, the barber surgeons and doctors here have been having uncharacteristic success in their operations. And it’s no wonder why -- the place stinks of angels.

Specifically, one angel, who always smells like he just walked out from a bakery.

“I would not have expected to see you here,” Crowley says, folding himself into an open chair to Aziraphale’s left, keeping a respectful seat between them.

“Miracles happen in the most unlikely of places,” he replies, and his statement is punctuated with a few garbled screams and curses that make him wince, barely perceptible. The patient is awake, vaguely drunk in an attempt to ease the pain as four men hold down his limbs and the surgeon makes the first few cuts into his body.

“I didn’t think you had the stomach for this sort of thing.”

“I’ve been around for some of the darkest periods in human history,” Aziraphale points out, as if Crowley wasn’t right there beside him and had somehow missed out on all the horrors humans had inflicted upon one another over the years. “At least this time, they’re trying to help one another.”

“I guess you could call it that.” It’s a desperate last resort that nearly seventy-five people have crowded into the space to watch. They’re putting on a show.

“And what brings you here? Nothing good, I’m sure…”

“Work,” is his distracted answer -- the inside of a human body is still so fascinating, warm red and brown, flashes of unsterilized silver in between. Muscle, bone, blood -- hard to believe his body is supposed to be made up of the same squishy, vulnerable stuff.

“And what is it that you do these days, Crowley?”

Almost proudly he declares, “I alleviate all that ails you,” and leaps into the seat right beside Aziraphale, brandishing the contents of his medicine bag. Curious, Aziraphale sifts through the various cartons and jars with his fingertips, wary of the loose powders that dust everything in the bag. He raises an eyebrow at the _Miracle_ Medicament, and Crowley explains that it’s just a marketing thing.

“And since when did you become a doctor?” With a satisfying little pop that is lost in the cursing coming from the center of the room, Aziraphale opens the bottle and raises it to his nose. “Crowley, that is absolutely foul.”

“Well, yeah. It’s no more than licorice root, black pepper and grain alcohol.”

“Alcohol?” The angel sounds indignant. Offended almost, though he enjoys a good Armagnac, a nice chardonnay, as much as the next man. “That’s all your cure is?”

“That or opium.”

“Crowley, that--”

“Tell me where the harm in that is. It might not cure them, but neither will any of this malarkey here.” A wave of his hand indicates the surgeon and his struggling patient before them. As near as he can tell, the procedure is going relatively well, which leaves him questioning where exactly Aziraphale fits into the equation. Regardless, he can’t stand much more screaming -- it’s grating, putting his pointed teeth on edge -- and a flourish of his fingers quickly puts a stop to that. It’s clear that an unconscious patient is not a good thing because the crowd of spectators collectively leans forward to watch as the surgeon breaks a sweat and picks up the pace.

Humans never cease to amaze Crowley in their depravity.

“At least they can ignore their pain for a little while.”

“It’s false hope, Crowley. It’s wrong.”

“Oh, and helping these quacks out is right?” Almost six thousand years and Aziraphale still gets on him about what’s right and wrong. A contractual obligation, he figures. “What do you think will happen when the miracles dry up and this lot still thinks they can cure people? How many surgeries are they going to botch because of their overinflated egos? How many people are going to die because they’ve mistakenly put their trust in a man who can’t tell an appendix from an asshole?”

Aziraphale shifts in his seat, fluttering like a caged bird. Nervous. Crowley knows what he wants to say, that _it’s not for him to say._ Fucking ineffability.

Crowley sighs. He has spent the last twenty years sleeping -- this is his first time seeing Aziraphale since that matter with parliament in Aix-en-Provence and he doesn’t really want to spend it nitpicking over ethics. As if such a thing really exists.

He pulls another green glass bottle from his bag and rips the cork out with his teeth, spitting it, devil-may-care, onto the floor.

“Bottoms up, angel.”


	2. Chapter 2

“It’s absurd!” Aziraphale is slurring. 

“You really think so?” Crowley’s face is warm and he’s undone his cravat, letting it hang loose around his neck like he’s never before heard of propriety. 

“Absolutely.” Several empty bottles of the miraculous medicament are stacked at their feet. “Three teeth in a minute? Totally unreasonable. Ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Crowley takes another swig and passes the last bit of medicine to the angel. Clearly he’s yet to hear the apocryphal tales of the Fastest Knife in the West End. “O ye of little faith. He’s surely done this a dozen times before.”

“Successfully?” Aziraphale doubts. “This man can’t possibly…!” The nasty concoction no longer makes him gag as he tilts his head and upends the bottle down his throat. He smacks his lips. “He looks no more than a child.”

“But he does know how to work a room,” Crowley observes, flexing his nose just enough for his glasses to centimeter down it, giving him a good look at the fellow. Bare-handed, he holds a middle-aged man’s chin in a firm grip and eyes the row of crooked teeth, tilting his head this way and that to inspect the dead molars that had been pointed out. “Wonder if he’s looking for a job…”

After the kidney stones had been removed and a fresh layer of sawdust strewn onto the operating room floor, the surgeon wiped his brow and proceeded to remove a young man’s left foot. With any impending infections secretly staved off thanks to Aziraphale, the operating room floor was yielded to a particularly zealous barber surgeon looking to expand his brand by pulling teeth. Offering coupons up if he failed, he promised painless extractions by his highly skilled hands, dexterous with a knife as well as a razor and any number of other more questionable tools. Charming, in a strange way, as all barber surgeons are, with their teeth and blood on display in their storefront windows. 

“I could use a man like that in my show,” Crowley decides. Despite the curative powers of his medicine, there’s always folks looking to get an achey tooth pulled or a festering boil removed. “Great draw, but I don’t care for it myself. Slippery, spit. Reflexes and all. Foul breath. I feel someone’s bound to lose a finger.”

“Would make for an interesting show.”

“That it would,” Crowley sniffs, taking the bottle back before Aziraphale can wipe it down and finishing off the rank concoction with a swipe of his tongue around the mouth. “What do you say? I’ll bet all the money in my pocket--“ nothing to a demon, four pounds and a handful of pennies “-- that he pulls it off; three teeth in a minute.”

“The teeth must remain intact,” Aziraphale brokers, lips turning downward when he peers over at the medicine bag and notices they’ve worked through all the potent elixir Crowley brought with him. 

“I’ve some powdered ginger and cocaine if you’re interested,” Crowley offers when he sees the disappointment on the angel’s face. “Rub it on your gums, it’ll work wonders.”

The angel kindly declines the offer and redirects their attention to the center of the room, where the barber is withdrawing a strange long-handled tool from his black bag and asking if anyone has a watch. 

“Right here, lad.” Crowley is quick to withdraw his silver pocket watch from inside his jacket, engraved but not to him, and flick it open. “On my signal.”

Some calculated twisting and elbow leverage and the first tooth pops free from the infected gums and lands in a dish at the side with an enamel clatter. The second slides out of its socket same as the first, a little bit of blood pooling in the man’s mouth and more than thirty seconds still on the watch face.   
But the third tooth stays put. Incredibly stubborn. Rooted more firmly than any well-to-do man’s teeth should be with his sort of proclivities. 

The seconds tick by and Crowley lets out a quiet, dejected groan when the minute is up.

“Ah yes, must’ve been some mistake,” Aziraphale drawls, tucking his prize money into his pocket. “I’m sure if the good barber were to look again, he’d see that there aren’t any more diseased teeth in that mouth. All perfectly healthy.”

“You bastard,” Crowley burps. The patient spits a painfully thick mouthful of blood out into the dish holding his excised teeth. He’ll probably have to pay if he wants to keep them. Crowley smiles at the tricky little miracle. “Be sure to give me back my medicine. Else I’ll be hemorrhaging money.”

The two of them nearly retch as they clear their systems and return the foul substance to the bottles. All but one of them refills and reseals itself, each of them choosing to hold onto a small serving of inebriation for a little while longer, just enough to get them home. Crowley packs the medicine back into his bag and rises to his feet, still making a face as he follows the angel out of the row of seats. 

Distinguished gentlemen and medical students filter out around them onto the streets while the two stand on the sidewalk. Crowley stretches, popping the seemingly infinite stack of vertebrae down his back. Aziraphale dusts his sleeves as if trying to rid himself of the smell of blood and the depravity of an operating theatre. There’s an uneasiness between them and it tastes like hesitation, sweat in the air on two sets of nervous palms. 

“Well,” Crowley sighs, dutiful as a demon, “I should be heading off.” A few more seconds of fidgeting where he shifts his weight to his other foot and checks the time. 

“Crowley, dear?” 

He drops the watch back into his pocket and looks up at Aziraphale. “What?” He wonders if he finally got around to opening his bookstore. 

“Fix your tie.”

“Oh. Right.”


End file.
